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But

we, who in the shadow sit,

Know also when the day is nigh, Seeing thy shining forehead lit

With his inspiring prophecy.

Thou hast thine office; we have ours; God lacks not early service here,

But what are thine eleventh hours

He counts with us for morning cheer;

Our day, for Him, is long enough,

And when He giveth work to do,

The bruised reed is amply tough

To pierce the shield of error through.

But not the less do thou aspire

Light's earlier messages to preach;

Keep back no syllable of fire,

Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech. Yet God deems not thine aëried sight

More worthy than our twilight dim, For meek Obedience, too, is Light,

And following that is finding Him.

THE CAPTIVE.

It was past the hour of trysting,
But she lingered for him still;

Like a child, the eager streamlet

Leaped and laughed adown the hill,

Happy to be free at twilight

From its toiling at the mill.

Then the great moon on a sudden,
Ominous, and red as blood,

Startling as a new creation,

O'er the eastern hill-top stood,

Casting deep and deeper shadows

Through the mystery of the wood.

Dread closed huge and vague about her,
And her thoughts turned fearfully
To her heart, if there some shelter
From the silence there might be,
Like bare cedars leaning inland
From the blighting of the sea.

Yet he came not, and the stillness
Dampened round her like a tomb;
She could feel cold eyes of spirits
Looking on her through the gloom,
She could hear the groping footsteps
Of some blind, gigantic doom.

Suddenly the silence wavered

Like a light mist in the wind,

For a voice broke gently through it,

Felt like sunshine by the blind,

And the dread, like mist in sunshine,
Furled serenely from her mind.

"Once my love, my love for ever,
Flesh or spirit, still the same;

If I missed the hour of trysting,
Do not think my faith to blame,

I, alas, was made a captive,

As from Holy Land I came.

"On a green spot in the desert,

Gleaming like an emerald star, Where a palm-tree, in lone silence, Yearning for its mate afar,

Droops above a silver runnel,

Slender as a scymitar,

"There thou 'lt find the humble postern To the castle of my foe;

If thy love burn clear and faithful,

Strike the gateway, green and low,

Ask to enter, and the warder
Surely will not say thee no."

Slept again the aspen silence,

But her loneliness was o'er;

Round her heart a motherly patience Wrapt its arms for evermore;

From her soul ebbed back the sorrow, Leaving smooth the golden shore.

Donned she now the pilgrim scallop, Took the pilgrim staff in hand; Like a cloud-shade, flitting eastward,

Wandered she o'er sea and land;

Her soft footsteps in the desert

Fell like cool rain on the sand.

Soon, beneath the palm-tree's shadow,
Knelt she at the postern low;
And thereat she knocketh gently,

Fearing much the warder's no;

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